


hereafter may she suffer

by seventeencrows



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/F, if there's anything isabel sofia lovelace is good at recognizing by now, it's variations on a theme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 20:20:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12689535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventeencrows/pseuds/seventeencrows
Summary: if you had a second chance for every brilliant scientist tragically killed in the middle of a coup at age 28, maybe you’d figure out a way to keep them alive in the first place.





	hereafter may she suffer

**Author's Note:**

> i’m mortified and tired and staring down the start of a real downhill slide by myself, which means it’s time to write shitty fic
> 
> title from bram stoker's _dracula:_ "even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer—both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.

it all comes down to this: she is about to die, and you aren’t there to save her.

it’s not real like aliens aren’t real—you have to hear it from someone else, watch the footage or read the file, and you still don’t know how she died, not _really._ she might’ve been in engineering _(she was in the hangar bay),_ she was alone _(minkowski was there),_ she was—

was she afraid? like you were, that first time?

if you had a nickel for every french-braided _(curly-haired)_ smart mouth with a love of mid-century british sitcoms _(atlases from the 13th century)_ and a penchant for losing her glasses _(a nihilistic streak a mile wide)_ who laughed at your shitty jokes and wrapped her arms around your waist in the dark and let you pretend that there was a future waiting for you on a far-away horizon, maybe you could bribe your way into a universe where this doesn’t keep happening. it’d be the best sort of sale: buy one, get one; the second one doesn’t get sent up here to die if the first one makes it home to live and you turn a profit too, isabel. a few hours’ sleep, a moment’s peace from the—you call them nightmares like they don’t follow you into the day, flashes like they don’t linger, call them ghosts like you don’t wonder what that would make you—

it all comes down to this: you don’t know how she died because you weren’t there to see it.

that means something different for the both of them, you know that, but it doesn’t change the facts. the line shifts or curves or gets thinner yet but it’s still pointed in the same direction. you still can’t cross it.

that side: an airlock, a virus, a dark room that wasn’t as empty as she thought, a gun pressed right between her eyes.

this side: you, up to your elbows in shuttle guts; you, watching the cryo-chamber fill with frost; you, choking on your own blood—

it all comes down to this: you get the gist of dying, isabel. you’ve lived through it enough times.

**Author's Note:**

> right before posting this, i did the math and realized fourier would have just turned 29 but listen, if they can fire shotguns in space and have selective gravity for Plot Purposes, y'all can overlook me squidging the math 
> 
> as always, i'm @rahayn on tumblr


End file.
